Carolina landed from the Charleston packet, and had joyful welcome. The next day approached in a body the delegates from Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, George Washington and Patrick Henry among them. There was no drilling in the public grounds of Philadelphia on that day. The officers of all the city companies, and nearly every gentleman who could get a horse, five hundred mounted men in all, rode six miles out of town to meet the coming members and escort them to the city. At the distance of two miles the cavalcade was met by the companies of foot and a band of music. All Philadelphia gathered in the streets, at the windows, on the house-tops, to see the procession pass and salute the delegates with cheers. The day after arrived the members from New England, New York and New Jersey, whose whole journey had been an ovation. Congress met on the tenth of May with nearly every one of the sixty-three delegates present. They adopted the New England army as their own and elected George Washington Commanderin-Chief."

Old Christopher Marshall, a retired druggist of Philadelphia, a Quaker expelled for taking an active part against the King. wrote in his diary on the seventh of May: "It is admirable to see the alteration in the tory class in this place since the account of the engagement in New England; their language is quite softened, and many of them have so far renounced their former sentiments as that they have taken in arms and are joined in the associations; nay, even many of the stiff Quakers, some even of those who drew up the Testimony, are ashamed of their proceedings. The Friends held a meeting last fifth day afternoon in order to consider how to send a supply to the Bostonians, it being a matter they had before treated with contempt and ridicule. The people were signing petitions to the Assembly asking them to raise fifty thousand pounds for the defense of the province, and to obstruct the navigation of the river by sinking ships. Military companies, organized on Franklin's system, were exercising in every public ground in and about the city, while the Philosophical Society was searching its books to discover the process of making saltpeter. Soon the bold conception was promulgated that, perhaps by the favor of Heaven and the wit of patriots, even cannon might be cast in Philadelphia."

It was a great event, when, early in the next year, Frederick

Antes announced to Congress that he and Mr. Potts had succeeded in casting and proving at Warwick furnace, in Chester County, a four-pounder cannon, the first thus cast in America.

In that company of five hundred horsemen we see the Antes brothers, Frederick, William and Henry, and in the course of this history will show why they are entitled to a position among the patriot fathers who laid so broad and strong the foundations of our liberties. We will go back to the days of their father and catch hold of the threads that are to be woven into their robe of

renown.

T

CHAPTER II.

A NOTABLE COLONIAL LEADER.

HE FATHER of John Henry Antes was one of the most distinguished men in the Colony of Pennsylvania. In that transition period there were several rival classes struggling to obtain the supremacy in shaping the affairs of the Colony. The material which they had to work upon and to bring into harmony was of the most diverse character. The oppressed of all nations. had to come to Pennsylvania to realize their dream of liberty, and to find a home where they could rear their children in a freedom that had been pictured to them in glowing colors by the agents of the Penns.

These immigrants, with seeming oneness of purpose, brought with them the peculiarities of their ancestral homes, which had become a part of their natures through ages of hereditary transmission. By these their ideas of liberty were colored, and, as a consequence, the conception of the duties and privileges belonging to their new estate were as varied as the countries from which they came.

The problem of the rulers was to bring these people into a compact relationship that would give strength and stability to the new State.

Reichel says: "There could not be found at that time on any other spot on the globe such a mixture of nationalities and languages, such a medley of opinions and views so freely maintained and so fearlessly proclaimed, as in Pennsylvania. English and Irish, Scotch and Welsh, Germans and Swiss, Swedes and Danes, Dutch and French, Jews and Indians were scattered throughout the whole province, maintaining their nationalities without any political restraint, and still more variegated, perhaps, were the religious views of the first settlers. Truth and error, genuine piety and utter indifference to all religion, fanaticism and mere formality, were to be found side by side in the enjoyment of equal rights and privileges."

In Philadelphia the conservative English Quakers were at

first supreme. But a growing spirit of radicalism, under the vigorous leadership of Franklin, threatened to overthrow them. This culminated in the social and political dissensions so painfully prominent at the bursting forth of the war for independence. Near the city there were colonies of Welsh, who, in a strong clannish spirit, attempted to perpetuate the customs handed down from centuries of ancestors. Toward the frontier the bold and sturdy Scotch and Irish braved the greatest hardships, and holding fast to their religious customs defied alike the terrors of the wilderness and the savage Indians that roamed beneath their shades. But of all that came there were none more interesting than the Germans.

Reichel says: "In 1682 the Frankfort Company was formed by ten gentlemen of note, mostly Mennonites, living in Frankfort on the Main. The object of this company was to procure an asylum in Pennsylvania for their friends and religious associates. In 1683, August 20, one of the leaders of this company, F. Daniel Pastorius, arrived on the shores of the Delaware with twenty German and Dutch families, and they were soon followed by others. They bought nearly 8,000 acres of land from Penn, the Germantown and Manatawny patent, and in 1685, October 25, Germantown was laid out, and in 1689 incorporated by the Assembly the first German town in Pennsylvania. The comparatively small number of German immigrants, which, however, gradually increased, was in 1709 followed by an emigration en masse. The continual wars on the continent of Europe, scarcity of provisions, causing an actual famine, and, above all, the religious oppression of the different governments in connection with repeated changes in the confession of faith, especially in the Palatinate, awakened among the masses a desire for the land of liberty. The distress seemed to have reached its climax in the dreadful winter of 1709, when thousands died of cold and starvation. The invitation of Queen Anne, of England, promising free transportation to America and good land without price, was therefore joyfully accepted, and in a short time no less than 30,000 Germans had left their native places, relying on the promise of the British Queen."

Many of these newcomers built their homes on the hills above the city, until Germantown was like one of the towns of the fatherland. In among the cliffs of the Wissahickon scholarly men,

with mystical aspirations, enraptured with an ideal hermit life, built themselves hermitages and in solitude, or in communities of those likeminded, gave themselves to the contemplation of holy things. Some of these men had thorough university training, as also the vigorous health of unimpared manhood. Their habits were not as startling to the people of their day as they would be to us, because, when Philadelphia was in its infancy, necessity compelled many to dwell in caves dug out of the bank of the river, or in the plainest log huts that could be put together. There were no homes for the wearied passengers discharged from the ships, and many dwelt in booths under the shelter of the forest trees. To these travelers the hermits administered help and counsel. Their peculiar religious fanaticism was manifested only as their hermit isolation was long continued.

These Germans, however, had a hard time of it. One of them wrote a book from which we quote as follows:

"Only the misfortunes which I myself endured, and the wicked devices which the Newlanders tried to play upon me, and my family, wakened in me a sense of duty not to conceal that which I knew. The most important object of this statement was the miserable and distressful condition of those who migrate from Germany to this new land, and the inexcusable and remorseless dealings of the Dutch traffickers in human beings, and their man-stealing emissaries, the so-called Newlanders, for they entrap, as it were, the people of Germany by means of all sorts of plausible deceptions, and deliver them in the hands of the great Dutch sellers of souls. The latter derive a large profit and the Newlanders a small profit from this trade. Before I left Pennsylvania, as it became known that I intended to return to Wurtemberg, many Wurtembergers, Durlachers and Palatines, of whom many are there, who every day of their lives bemoan and bewail their lot, in having left their Fatherland, besought me with tears and upraised hands for God's sake to make known to Germany their misery and heart pangs, so that not only the common people, but also the princes and nobility might know their experience, and that innocent souls might no more be persuaded by the Newlanders to leave the Fatherland and be led into a life of slavery."

After describing the terrors of the voyage, he continues: